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Wally Hilliard’s links to American intelligence go back (at least) to November of 1981, when his insurance company, Wisconsin Employer’s Group, was bought out by Myron Du Bain, a World War II OSS/CIA operative and the Chairman of Fireman’s Fund of San Francisco.

We discovered the connection in a trip to Green Bay several years ago.

During an evening speech to honor the public service institute that Bush founded two decades ago, Obama called for cooperation between Republicans and Democrats. The former president, he said, proved that “the R or D next to your name is irrelevant” in challenging times.

“You might not always know it from watching the cable news shows or listening to folks on the radio,” Obama said, but “I think we’re standing in one of those moments.”

For his part, Bush reflected on Obama — the man who succeeded his son, President George W. Bush — as someone who at their initial meeting showed greater concern for Hurricane Katrina evacuees than for the television cameras.

“He came without fanfare,” Bush said of Obama’s 2005 visit to the region. “He was someone I could quickly see was genuinely concerned about helping others.”

They were joined onstage Friday in the Texas A&M University auditorium by Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, who also served in the previous administration and was CIA director under the elder Bush.

On Thursday, Obama had fielded tough questions in New Orleans about the federal response in the four years since Katrina. And he was not subtle in pointing to the failings of the younger Bush’s administration.

Friends of George H.W. Bush said that he has a genuine regard for Obama and that he came up with the idea six months ago of inviting the president to come to this college town to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the Points of Light Institute.

The former president is said to be unhappy with the Bush-bashing in Washington, but one former advisor said George H.W. Bush doesn’t hold it against Obama.

“Politics is politics,” said Ron Kaufman, a former White House political director. “But some things are bigger than that. He, like other Americans, would like to see the president be successful.”

Nevertheless, in the heart of Republican country, Obama inspired some protests and criticism.

Outside the auditorium Friday, a crowd of more than 100 chanted and waved signs, including one about the Obama administration’s spending and one about the national debt.

Inside, Bush had put together a polite and enthusiastic crowd.

The former president, who celebrated his 85th birthday in June with a parachute jump, walked gingerly with a cane. But he spoke in an unwavering voice of his admiration for Obama.

The evening was devoted to lauding the work of the Points of Light Institute, the name of which comes from a speech Bush gave envisioning the combined effect of individuals in public service.

Obama called on the audience of mostly college students to find time in their lives for service, even when it isn’t convenient or easy.

If the senior Bush could serve in combat missions overseas, Obama said, then “you can keep going when your service project gets tough.”

It’s the federal budget deficit for 2009, more than three times the most red ink ever amassed in a single year.

And, some economists warn, unless the government makes hard decisions to cut spending or raise taxes, it could be the seeds of another economic crisis.

Treasury figures released Friday showed that the government spent $46.6 billion more in September than it took in, a month that normally records a surplus. That boosted the shortfall for the full fiscal year ending Sept. 30 to $1.42 trillion. The previous year’s deficit was $459 billion.

As a percentage of U.S. economic output, it’s the biggest deficit since World War II.

“The rudderless U.S. fiscal policy is the biggest long-term risk to the U.S. economy,” says Kenneth Rogoff, a Harvard professor and former chief economist for the International Monetary Fund. “As we accumulate more and more debt, we leave ourselves very vulnerable.”

Forecasts of more red ink mean the federal government is heading toward spending 15 percent of its money by 2019 just to pay interest on the debt, up from 5 percent this fiscal year.

President Barack Obama has pledged to reduce the deficit once the Great Recession ends and the unemployment rate starts falling, but economists worry that the government lacks the will to make the hard political choices to get control of the imbalances.

Friday’s report showed that the government paid $190 billion in interest over the last 12 months on Treasury securities sold to finance the federal debt. Experts say this tab could quadruple in a decade as the size of the government’s total debt rises to $17.1 trillion by 2019.

Without significant budget cuts, that would crowd out government spending in such areas as transportation, law enforcement and education. Already, interest on the debt is the third-largest category of government spending, after the government’s popular entitlement programs, including Social Security and Medicare, and the military.

As the biggest borrower in the world, the government has been the prime beneficiary of today’s record low interest rates. The new budget report showed that interest payments fell by $62 billion this year even as the debt was soaring. Yields on three-month Treasury bills, sold every week by the Treasury to raise fresh cash to pay for maturing government debt, are now at 0.065 percent while six-month bills have fallen to 0.150 percent, the lowest ever in a half-century of selling these bills on a weekly basis.

The market watchdog agency said Friday that Adam Storch, vice president in Goldman Sachs’ Business Intelligence Group, is assuming the new position of managing executive of the SEC division.

The move came as the SEC has been revamping its enforcement efforts following the agency’s failure to uncover Bernard Madoff’s massive fraud scheme for nearly two decades despite numerous red flags.

Storch, who will be responsible for project management and operations, will report to SEC Enforcement Director Robert Khuzami.

Along with the enforcement division’s deputy director, Storch also will supervise the SEC’s Office of Market Intelligence, with an eye to improving the monitoring, collection and analysis of the hundreds of thousands of tips and complaints the agency receives annually.

Before joining Goldman Sachs, Storch was a senior consultant at accounting firm Deloitte & Touche. He is a certified public accountant and certified fraud examiner, and has an MBA from New York University and bachelors of science in business administration from the State University of New York in Buffalo.

Storch has a strong background in technology systems and project management, Khuzami said in a statement. “He will help to make us more efficient and nimble, and permit us to put more of our investigators on the front lines to detect and stop fraud,” Khuzami said.

All those young ladies are moms or moms-to-be at Paul Robeson High School. It’s not a school for young mothers, it’s a neighborhood school. And all of the pregnancies have happened, despite prevention talk.

If you want to know why, the people closest to the situation say there’s no simple explanation.

The FSA’s newly appointed and first director of international affairs, Verena Ross, said the Financial Stability Board (FSB) was key to ensuring all gaps in regulation between securities, insurance and banking sectors were plugged.

Formerly known as the Financial Stability Forum, the FSB was expanded in April to include central bankers and finance ministry and regulatory officials from all Group of 20 (G20) countries.

The G20 has asked the body, chaired by Bank of Italy Governor Mario Draghi, to coordinate global efforts to introduce new financial rules in light of the sector’s worst crisis in 70 years.

“I would advocate to make sure the FSB have a strong secretariat to support their work,” Ross told a City and Financial Conference.

“The role of the FSB is crucial. We will need to make sure it is able to play its role forcefully… Success depends on real progress over the next six to 12 months,” she said.

But the board has no legal teeth and there are “real questions” about whether the world can continue with such informal arrangements in the longer term, Ross said.

“There’s increasing concern about the future of the company and whether it’s heading for a GM-style bankruptcy or not,” said Mitsushige Akino, chief fund manager at Ichiyoshi Investment Management.

The airline, plagued with high costs in a severe industry downturn, has asked creditors for 600 billion yen ($6.6 billion) in financial aid, including 300 billion yen in debt waivers and debt-for-equity swaps, as part of a restructuring plan, according to two sources familiar with the matter.

The lack of water in the state’s reservoirs, coupled with the environmental collapse of the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta where water from the state’s wet north is pumped south to irrigate fields, has restricted the amount of water some of the state’s most prolific farmers receive to as little as 10 percent of normal.

…

“You think we had a tough year this year?” said Marvin Meyers, an almond grower on Fresno County’s dry west side. “Wait ’til next year.”

Farmers and the advisory board of the California Department of Agriculture said the state’s $36 billion agriculture industry cannot afford another season of uncertainty. More packing houses they depend on to send their fruits, nuts and vegetables around the world will move to more reliable areas — across the border into Mexico they fear — if they cannot count on a reliable supply.

Another year of pumping salt-laden water from underground aquifers could kill their soil, they say. Board members warned that the Westlands Water District on the valley’s west side is the first to be hit by the crisis, but the water problems are spreading to the state’s other agricultural regions.

Some avocado growers in San Diego County are cutting trees back to stumps because the limited available water is too expensive.